A striking new tome honors Dior’s first female creative director through the powerful lenses of today’s leading female photographers
Words by ELIZABETH VARNELL
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s visionary essay “We Should All Be Feminists” points out the ways in which cultures evolve while notions of gender don’t. Then it begins to describe Adichie’s hopeful belief that people can “remake themselves for the better.”
Her Dior: Maria Grazia Chiuri’s New Voice, by MARIA GRAZIA CHIURI, with text by MARIA LUISA FRISA.
This is also the defining vision of Dior’s newest anthology, Her Dior: Maria Grazia Chiuri’s New Voice (Rizzoli New York, $95), which launches just before International Women’s Day (March 8). Its cover image is of a T-shirt designed by Chiuri, the house’s creative director, and emblazoned with the title of Adichie’s work. Inside the volume, images of Chiuri’s collections shot by 33 women — including Tierney Gearon, Cass Bird, Nan Goldin, Maya Goded, Bibi Borthwick, Zoë Ghertner and Lean Lui — endeavor to depict the plurality of women. Chiuri’s support for women artists who continue to push the evolution of perception is clear.
SARA ESPARZA photographed by FABIOLA ZAMORA, Cruise 2019.
“These images have crucially contributed to valorizing my clothing range and sharpening my intentions”
Maria Grazia Chiuri
SELENA FORREST photographed by ZOË GHERTNER, Fall/Winter 2017/2018, first published in i-D.
“My dream, my aspiration is that we women should look at each other with our own eyes”
Maria Grazia Chiuri
“These images — and seeing them all together now has made me realize this — have crucially contributed to valorizing my clothing range and sharpening my intentions, translating the way I wanted my fashions to connect with today’s women,” Chiuri writes. The multiplicity of visions she embraces shows the creative power of the female gaze, and neatly underscores the book’s title.
dior.com.
Feature Image: NATAŠA VOJNOVIĆ photographed by TALIA CHETRIT, Fall/Winter 2018/2019.
This story originally appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of C Magazine.
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